In Nicomachean Ethics 2.1, Aristotle draws a now familiar analogy between aretai ('virtues') and technai ('skills'). The apparent basis of this comparison is that both virtue and skill are developed through practice and repetition, specifically by the learner performing the same kinds of actions as the expert: in other words, we become virtuous by performing virtuous actions. Aristotle’s claim that “like states arise from like activities” has led some philosophers to challenge the virtue-skill analogy. In particular, Aristotle’s skill analogy is (...) sometimes dismissed because of the role that practical wisdom or phronesis purportedly plays in character virtue. In this paper, I argue that a proper understanding of character virtue, phantasia-based emotions, and Aristotle’s implicit distinction between habituated and strict or full virtue (aretè kuria) grounds his virtue-skill analogy. Character virtue stems from the non-rational orektikon and is developed through the habituation of passionate elements, primarily phantasia and pathé. Pathé are pleasurable or affective perceptions, not judgments or beliefs. Thus, pathé are subject to non-rational habituation. Practical wisdom, on the other hand, is an intellectual virtue stemming from the rational part of the soul. Though practical wisdom is necessary for full virtue (aretè kuria), it is not necessary for the habituated character virtue that Aristotle refers in Book II. Once we understand the phantastic basis of emotions and the distinction between habituated and full virtue, the virtue-skill analogy is apt. I conclude by briefly mentioning two contemporary forms of emotion regulation—cognitive reappraisal and cognitive behavioral therapy—that lend support from empirical psychology to Aristotle’s claim that emotions (pathé) can be habituated. Character virtue is indeed a skill; it is—at least in part—the skill of emotion regulation. (shrink)

Alexander of Aphrodisias picks up Aristotle’s insufficient treatment of simultaneous perception and develops an adequate solution for the problem, thereby offering an account of the unity of perceptual consciousness—the single mental activity of a single subject with complex content. I show the adequacy of the solution by using as criteria the requirements that have been identified by Aristotle and approved (and explained) by Alexander. I analyze Alexander’s solution in two turns. First, with respect to heterogeneous perceptibles, Alexander adopts and reformulates (...) Aristotle’s metaphorical account invoking the analogy with a point. Second, with respect to homogeneous opposites, accordingly, perception is judgement, but it involves physical changes in diverse parts of the primary sense-organ. By this account Alexander resolves the issue of the unity of the subject on the level of the capacity of the soul, and coordinates the complexity of content with the complexity on the physical level. In addition to being adequate, the solution is faithful to Aristotle. I suggest that the interpretative decisions Alexander makes (the clarification of the analogy; the reference he finds to the analogy; the two components of the solution, judgement and parts of the organ) form an ingenious extension of Aristotle’s treatment. Interestingly, even though many elements in Alexander’s interpretation are taken up by modern commentators, no one has followed it in its entirety, nor even treated it in its own right. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 63, Issue 3, pp 257 - 292 It is commonly assumed that Aristotle defines a sense by reference to its ability to perceive the items that are proper to that sense, and that he explains perceptions of unities of these items, and discriminations between them, by reference to what is called the ‘common sense’. This paper argues in contrast that Aristotle defines a sense by reference, not only to its ability to perceive the proper items, but also (...) to its ability to discriminate between them, and thus aims to show that Aristotle’s theory of sense perception is basically a theory of perceptual discrimination. (shrink)

In many diagrams one seems to perceive necessity – one sees not only that something is so, but that it must be so. That conflicts with a certain empiricism largely taken for granted in contemporary philosophy, which believes perception is not capable of such feats. The reason for this belief is often thought well-summarized in Hume's maxim: ‘there are no necessary connections between distinct existences’. It is also thought that even if there were such necessities, perception is too passive or (...) localized a faculty to register them. We defend the perception of necessity against such Humeanism, drawing on examples from mathematics. (shrink)

This paper aims to identify several interpretive problems posed by the final part of DA II.11, where Aristotle intertwines the thesis that a sense is like a ‘mean’ and an explanation for the existence of a ‘blind spot’ related to the sense of touch, adding the further contention that we are capable of discriminating because the mean ‘becomes the other opposite’ in relation to the perceptible property being perceived. To solve those problems, the paper explores a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s (...) claims, arguing that they describe a homeostatic physiological reaction by which the sensory apparatus responds to perceptible stimuli. According to the proposed interpretation, such homeostatic reaction constitutes a necessary condition for perceiving what Aristotle refers to as ‘proper’ perceptible features, which include properties like ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ as well as colors and sounds. (shrink)

El debate acerca de la naturaleza de la percepción o aísthēsis en Aristóteles puede rastrearse ya en las obras de los comentadores antiguos. Desde hace un par de siglos, dos interpretaciones rivales se han posicionado como variantes extremas que nos aportan una concepción «literalista», o, por el contrario, «espiritualista», del fenómeno en cuestión. Sin embargo, ambas posturas coinciden en reducir la percepción a un asunto meramente «dado»: bien sea puramente fisiológico, o bien, únicamente intencional. Como consecuencia de ello, el dominio (...) conceptual resultaría separado de lo perceptual, algo que, según la célebre expresión de McDowell, representaría un punto de vista encantado por el «Mito de lo Dado». En este artículo defenderé una visión moderada del problema a través de una consideración sobre lo que podría denominarse el «espacio lógico» de la percepción, poniendo de relieve el papel conjunto y sintético de la diánoia en el discernimiento propio que implica todo proceso sensoperceptivo del alma específica del hombre. Si mi interpretación es correcta, difícilmente podría decirse que Aristóteles incurre en este tipo de mitología. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of innate concepts derived from Intellect in Plotinus’ account of cognition of the sensible realm. Several passages have been claimed as evidence for such innateness, but an analysis of them shows that they do not support this claim. It is tentatively suggested that, nevertheless, some very general concepts such as difference, sameness and being are integral to the faculty of sense and play a crucial role in concept formation. It is further argued that reasoning about (...) the sensible realm takes place to a large extent without the involvement of the higher realms of Plotinus’ hierarchy of being. Clearly, however, for value concepts such as those of goodness, justice and beauty human beings are dependent upon an illumination from Intellect. (shrink)

For Aristotle the fallacy of accident arises from mistakes about being per accidens and not from accidental predication. Mistakes in perceiving per accidens come from our judgements about being per accidens and so commit that fallacy. Practical syllogisms have the same formal structure as being and perceiving per accidens . Moreover perceiving per accidens typically provides the minor premise for the practical syllogism as it makes it possible for us to know singular propositions, especially those about substances. Thus these minor (...) premises may come about through fallacious reasoning, what today would be called reasoning via collateral information. On account of these foundations for the practical syllogism, even a person of practical wisdom will need a lot of luck to avoid mistakes. (shrink)

Sense experience, naïvely conceived, is a way of knowing perceptible properties: the colors, sounds, smells, flavors, and textures in our perceptual environment. So conceived, ordinary experience presents the perceiver with the essential nature of a property like Sky Blue or Middle C, such that how the property appears in experience is identical to how it essentially is. In antiquity, as today, it was controversial whether sense experience could meet the conditions for knowledge implicit in this naïve conception. Aristotle was a (...) partisan in this debate, but his position is poorly understood. This dissertation examines how Aristotle’s perceptual psychology responds to ancient challenges to the naïve conception, and so articulates his defense of perceptual knowledge. -/- Aristotle’s defense relies on an ontology of “perceptual qualities"—a core class of perceptible properties—according to which those qualities, despite having a perceiver-independent essence rooted in the physics of causation and affection, nevertheless can be present in experience as they essentially are. Chapter 1 defends this realist and objectivist reading against competing interpretations, which overlook a crucial distinction between perceptual qualities and perceptual objects. Chapter 2 presents Aristotle’s ontology as a physicalism that uncharacteristically allows for perceptual qualities to appear in experience as they essentially are. -/- This ontology informs Aristotle’s account of the psychological conditions under which perceivers actually are presented with the essence of perceptual qualities. The locus of this account is an obscure passage where Aristotle purports to show that the senses “discriminate” perceptual qualities because the senses are “mean states” (An. 2.11, 424a5–7). Chapter 3 develops a comprehensive interpretation of the sensory mean state, which Chapter 4 uses to elucidate Aristotle’s argument for sensory discrimination. Sensory discrimination turns out to be a process in which the essence of a perceptual quality comes to be present in the affection it produces in a perceiver. For Aristotle, this shows that sense perception meets a condition for knowledge that his predecessors, including Plato, thought it could not meet. For in his view, but not in theirs, sense experience shares in both the truth and the essence of the qualities it perceives. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Naïve Somatism is a re-interpretation of Aristotle’s cognitive psychology in light of certain presuppositions he holds about the living animal body. The living animal body is presumed to be sensitive, and Aristotle grounds his account of cognition in a rudimentary proprioceptive awareness one has of her body. With that presupposed metaphysics under our belts, we are in a position to see that Aristotle in de Anima (cognition chapters at least) has a di erent explanatory aim in view than that (...) which the literature generally imputes to him. He is not explicating what we would call the “mental”—the private, inner realm which some take to be of a di erent kind than the physical—as most take him to be. His explanandum is content acquisition; the explanans is showing how the body becomes like various aspects of objects. Although he famously describes the mind (nous) as unmixed with the body, he is guided by functional constrains—nous cannot be limited or qualified if it is to potentially think all things. Thus, his inquiry into cognition is philosophically limited from a contemporary perspective. Aristotle is not doing philosophy of mind, for he doesn’t seem to find the “mental” philosophically perplexing. (shrink)